1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to caching and more particularly to caching data in a cellular network.
2. Description of the Related Art
A cellular network is a radio network distributed over land areas called cells. Each cell is served by at least one fixed location transceiver known as a cell site or base station. When joined together, these cells provide radio coverage over a wide geographic area, which allows a large number of portable transceivers, including mobile phones and pagers, to communicate with each other and with fixed transceivers and telephones anywhere in the network via base stations, even if some of the transceivers are moving through more than one cell during transmission. Of note, cellular networks no longer merely provide voice services through mobile phones, but cellular networks also provide data services through mobile devices including mobile phones by providing connectivity between the cell sites of a cellular network and a main carrier network and ultimately, the global Internet.
As a mobile client traverses wireless cell sites in a cellular network, the complexity of the distribution of content to the mobile client despite the movement of the mobile device across the cell sites must remain transparent to the end user. In this regard, when a mobile client moves from one cell site to another while consuming data, for instance while playing a video, no interruption is to occur in the playing of the video on the mobile client notwithstanding the location of the mobile device.
To provide such transparency, different edge devices are deployed in a content distribution network to serve content over a backhaul connection to different cell sites geographically proximate to the edge devices. Ideally, content to be consumed by a mobile device traversing one or more cell sites should be placed at one or more edge devices geographically closest to the cell sites. Thus, the problem remains of determining across which cell sites a mobile device will travel in the future and in which edge device to co-locate content that may be consumed by the mobile device in order to expedite delivery of the content to the mobile device as the mobile device traverses the different cell sites in a cellular network.